Time Warner Cable Saps Patrick Stewart's Will To Live

If you’ve ever thought that being a celebrity entitles you to a hotline that instantly fixes all those annoying problems that bother the rest of us, Sir Patrick Stewart has news for you. The actor, best known for managing to look authoritative in that silly outfit from Star Trek: The Next Generation, says that his ordeal with Time Warner Cable has taken away his will to live.

The actor recently relocated to Brooklyn, so he’s one of the millions stuck with TWC as his cable/Internet provider. And just like many of those millions, Stewart’s attempts to get things started did not go as planned.

Last night, he Tweeted:

All I wanted to do was set up a new account with @twcable_nyc but 36hrs later I’ve lost the will to live.

After the message was re-Tweeted a few hundred times, TWC’s Twitter account took notice, asking him, “How can we assist you?”

To which Sir Pat replied, “If that question had been asked at any time in the last 36hrs it would have been of value. But now…”

Eventually, TWC released this statement to the New York Observer’s BetaBeat.com:
“Our Care and Social Media teams are fully engaged to make sure he’s well tended to. On behalf of the many Trekkers and Sir Patrick Stewart fans across our company, I can assure you, we will make it so.”

We still have to give then-Chicago White Sox manager (and now the guy who occasionally gets kicked out of Marlins games) Ozzie Guillen the celebrity complaint award for his 2010 blow-up over Comcast’s service.

Are the “Comcastcares” people still around? When your business model requires NEW customers to wait home ALL DAY to initiate the service, I would think that the initial “truck roll” would be done with the utmost care, because otherwise the customer will simply take their business elsewhe… oh. Never mind then.

Huh … I didn’t have any problem creating a new account online and setting up an appointment for service. Well, they DID insist I was in apartment 2, not 3, but I’m flexible. Plus, I needed my internet connection, so 2 it is!

He isn’t the other high-profiler to move there recently and I think Brooklyn has changed quite a bit in recent years. Obviously or else he wouldn’t have moved there but I think some of it is high priced. Isn’t this where ex-Prez Bill Clinton lived? Or still does?

My experience (you means “generic customer”, typing this as I think of it):
1) Customers don’t listen.
Even when they specifically ask my name they don’t even listen long to enough to get it right. So of course when give them instructions they screw it up over and over yet blame the one trying to help them.
2) Don’t read.
Doesn’t matter how clear the instructions are, they read only a few words, do whatever they think should do and then complain it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work, try actually reading the entire set of instructions instead of assuming its product failure.
3) Don’t answer questions, especially multi-part questions
Its amazing how many yes or no questions get answered with a restatement of the problem. I didn’t ask to explain the problem again. I asked a yes or no question. If I ask more then one question, hey guess what, I want the answers to all those questions. Not answering just drags the whole thing out.
4) Get defensive
Guess what, I don’t care what happened or why it broke or if you are at fault or not. I can either help you or I can’t. I want you off my phone as fast as possible. Fixing the problem will achieve that I am all for it. You getting irate for no reason and hanging up, does the same thing. Have the time on my calls is trying to get the person to tell me what actually happened so I can understand why something broke and trying to do it in such a way they don’t thing they are at fault (even though 99% of the time they are). To put it simply – we don’t care, quit being defensive and making it difficult to help you.
5) Don’t give us the entire error message
OMG I get tired of people paraphrasing an error message that they are literally looking at while talking to me. Its one thing when trying to dredge it up from your memory but when you are looking at it, read the whole damn thing.
6) Don’t re-do our steps anyway (or follow instructions)
Sure you might have done all the stuff we are about to tell you to do, but to bad you get to do it again. You know why? A) because we have too and B) because you might have missed something. If I had a dime for everytime I simply forced people to carefully go back over their initial steps and discovered a simple error they missed…
7) Don’t reboot, pull the battery, power off and on, etc.
Before you call, do that stuff. Its amazing how many things a restart will clear up. It will not kill you and might even save you a lot of time and trouble. If we ask you to do it, don’t argue, just do it, for the same reasons.
8) Don’t Google
I assume you have a brain and now how to search for stuff. It is amazing the amount of useful information you might get if type Product_Name Error_Message in a search engine and see what pops.
9) Do threaten me, do yell at me
The sure fire way to make sure I do the least I can to help you is make it difficult for me to help you. The more you work with me, the more I am going to try to help you. The worse you make it, the more likely I am going to throw up walls to make helping you harder and take longer.
10) “The customer is always right”
Its a great slogan, but guess what, the customer is almost always wrong. About many things. Regardless of title or past experience. Just telling me that or some variation isn’t going to change jack sh#% because all I care about is what my manager says I can and cannot do.
11) “It worked before”
If “it worked before” was the iron clad rule people treat it to be, there would be no need for support cause nothing would break. So repeating it over and over does not help. We ask when the last time something worked because the timeline of events may prove helpful. That is all.
12) Don’t treat us with respect
We didn’t break your stuff or cause your problem. Yelling at us, being angry at us or venting to us doesn’t help and again I will just throw up walls to help you. You wouldn’t like us eating and slurping while talking to you, so don’t do it us. Same for screaming kids, pets, etc. If you have that many distractions at once, maybe wait until have time to focus on the one problem.